The Music Makes it Home Study found that listening to music out loud leads to stronger relationships, more intimacy, happier families and more quality time spent together.

Santa Barbara, California – 9 February 2016 – Today, Sonos released the findings of a worldwide study that shows the transformative power of listening to music out loud at home. The Music Makes It HomeStudy found that listening to music out loud leads to stronger relationships, more intimacy, happier families, and more quality time spent together. According to the study, people who listen to music out loud at home the most spend an additional three hours and 13 minutes per week together with their household members than those who listen out loud the least.

“For years, Sonos owners have been telling us amazing stories about how music has transformed their houses into homes,” said John MacFarlane, Sonos Chief Executive Officer. “The challenge has been to capture the transformation in science. Now we have an innovative approach to understanding the benefits of music in the home.”

The Music Makes It Home Study was a two-part endeavour designed to better understand if playing music throughout a home can change the way we connect. In the first phase, Sonos asked 30,000 people across eight countries about music and their relationships at home. The second phase was a unique experiment that tracked what happens when people play music out loud in their homes.

“The truth is people may be sharing a home, but they aren’t sharing much else. Music may be able to change that by bringing everyone back together,” said Dr. Daniel J. Levitin, neuroscientist, musician and author of the international best-selling book, This is Your Brain on Music. “This study takes an important step forward in showing how listening to music out loud can enhance relationships at home.”

The findings include:

Musical homes have more romance. People who say they listen to music out loud together the most have 67% more sex, and almost a quarter of people would give up sex before music according to survey data.

Our study shows that listening to music out loud can lead to more happiness. After music was introduced in the home, 43% of participants reported feeling extremely loved, an 87% increase from before there was music at home.

Boring things can become more fun. In our survey, 83% of participants believe doing chores is easier when listening to music.

50% of respondents enjoy cooking more while listening to music. This was underscored in the experiment, where we could see an increase in the time spent together in the kitchen by 20%.

Participant homes in the experiment ranged from roommates and married couples to multi-generational families, as well as couples living together for the first time. Using iPhones, Apple Watches, iBeacons and motion-activated cameras, a variety of data was collected, including daily video journals that provided insight into how music transformed the homes.

The “Music Makes It Home” Study was a global study compromising a 30,000 respondent digital survey using a representative sample from panels provided by Survey Sampling International. The survey was conducted between 29 December 2015 and 8 January 2016 in the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, and France. The in-home study was conducted in 30 homes across the same markets that were pre-screened and selected based on baseline criteria that they lived with at least one other person, had access to high-speed Internet at home and did not previously own Sonos. Participants were asked to live one week without music and one week with Sonos and streaming music between 13 January 2016 and 29 January 2016. Data was collected via Apple Watches, iPhones, iBeacon, and motion-activated cameras. More information on the design and methodology of the in-home study is available at www.musicmakesithome.com.